Set to a mash-up of the classic Queen songs "Another One Bites the Dust," "Bohemian Rhapsody," "Killer Queen" and "We Will Rock You," the trailer unveils 90 seconds of footage from the film, including replications of concerts, recording sessions, the band's rise to fame and excessive lifestyle. "The only thing more extraordinary than their music," reads a series of graphics, "is his story."

A significant chunk of the trailer focuses on the making of the song "Bohemian Rhapsody," including Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury telling a bemused Brian May (Gwilym Lee) in the studio, "This is when the operatic section comes in." Later, a record-company executive complains that, at six minutes, the song "goes on forever," to which Mercury replies, "I pity your wife if you think six minutes is forever" as his bandmates stifle laughter.

The trailer was first screened last month at CinemaCon in Las Vegas. Although reaction to the clip ranged from "it looks like a hell of a biopic" to "a bit questionable," Rami Malek's portrayal of Freddie Mercury received raves.

During the presentation, Malek spoke of the challenges of playing the singer. “When I got this role, I thought, 'Oh, my God, this could be a career-defining performance,’” he said. “And then two minutes later I thought, 'This could be a career killer.” He added, from his own experience as a fan, that Mercury "gives everyone watching permission to embrace their imperfections and sing as loudly as they can."

Bohemian Rhapsody, which will arrive in theaters on Nov. 2, has had a long, difficult time going from conception to screen, with several changes in writer, director and star before it was finalized with, respectively, Justin Haythe, Dexter Fletcher and Malek. That included an attempt to have Sacha Baron Cohen star as Mercury, but Cohen said he was fired because he wanted accurate depictions of Mercury's drug use and homosexuality, but the band wanted a sanitized version.

May later gave his own side of Cohen's dismissal, saying that Cohen's presence "would be very distracting. We thought there has to be no distraction in the Freddie movie. You have to really suspend that disbelief – the man who plays Freddie, you have to really believe is Freddie. And we didn’t that could really happen with Sacha."